Director: Phil Willmott.
Starring: Steven Butler, Grace Gardner, Andrew C Wadsworth.
Synopsis: Can the Lost Boys of Never Neverland ever become the men of the Great War?
Phil Willmott’s musical Lost Boy is a sequel to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, telling what happens to the Lost Boys when they grow up. It is an ambitious musical with lots of themes running through it. The musical numbers, arranged by Mark Collins, mix music hall with musical theatre in style, but they lack cohesion.
Peter Pan, played by Steven Butler, has had to grow up and as a young man finds his ‘awfully big adventure’ in the trenches of the Great War. On the eve of a battle in 1914, Captain Peter Pan is rallying the troops before they go over the top the next morning. He falls asleep and dreams of his Wendy, played by Grace Gardener. Peter is eager to prove to Wendy he is a man so the ‘ugly adult games’ begin.
The Lost Boys have grown up to become successful Edwardian ‘men about town’ but they become ‘lost boys’ again on Friday nights when they go out looking for fights and trouble as they recreate the adventures they had as children, fighting pirates. The wives of the Lost Boys are the LWC or Lost Wives club which meet on Fridays and they delight in warning Wendy of the perils of loving a Lost Boy. Peter’s deviant cohort introduce him to the delights of women and these ideas are a theme running through the musical which can have the effect of making it feel quite smutty at times.
Andrew C Wadsworth is an excellent J.M Barrie, Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, and at times has a slightly pantomime feel about him. Mr. Darling is a man who takes his responsibility of manhood seriously and does his best for his daughter and two sons who have followed two very different paths. Michael (brilliantly played by Joseph Taylor) has grown up to become a trapeze artist who flies every night especially with his partner, who he later sees being blown up in the trenches. John Darling (Richard James King) has become a Psychiatrist whose Jungian Dream analysis song is brilliantly funny but does not sit well with the format of the rest of the musical score. John’s role of a consciencious objector is fortunate for Wendy as it enables her and the other lost wives to go to the trenches to try and rescue their lost boys. Tinker Bell (Joanna Woodward) has become a prostitute with too small a heart and is an associate of Captain Hook who is hooked on chasing opium dragons.
The musical has some very moving scenes but too many themes running through it for them all to fully develop or grow up, just like the Lost Boys never do. The characters of the show all have their own hit number to sing which after a while becomes formulaic. The scenery backdrop of no man’s land is disappointing and does not really enhance the plot especially when it is meant to depict gay Paris or London.
The impact of the horrors of the Great War are not really fully embraced until the tail end of the second half which is a shame, as the Lost Wives nurses, at the end, are symbolic, along with Peters lonely horrible realization, that there is no point to the atrocities of war.
[usr=3] Lost Boy is running at the Charing Cross Theatre in London’s West End until 15th February, 2014
